So how many of you have stood outside a dungeon spamming 'LFP so and so dungeon!' or seen people do it? Quite a few, right?
I think it'd be a good idea for Arenanet to implement some kind of dungeon-finding utility which we can all use. I remember them saying in an interview that they don't want people standing around spamming: 'need monk for party!' but at the moment people are standing around just spamming: 'need party!' It's not fun. I'd rather queue up for a dungeon and then go off and do some dynamic events, or some WvW. I don't want to sit outside Ascalon Catacombs and wait half an hour for a party to come together.

So, who agrees with me? And who doesn't agree with me? What features would you like the dungeon finder to have? Feel free to discuss below

Also, for those who say it ruined WoW - why did it ruin WoW? Did the developers and designers just nerf every dungeon to make it super easy? What if Arenanet implemented a dungeon-finding utility without nerfing the dungeons whatsoever?

Join a guild or five? I believe that is one of the main purposes of guilds in GW2, to have a few lobbies of people you generally know to pull from. Who knows, you might just find some regulars you like to play with that way.

Simply don't call it "Dungeon Finder" and avoid any link to WoW or the rabid GW2 fans, will simply reject anything that is even remotely close associated with WoW, no matter if a system is actually good or bad.

So call it "grouping system" or "adventurer gathering", something nice and friendly. In fact since dungeons are so unappealing atm, the system should cover and make Event/WvW/sPvP grouping more easy.

Or at the very least, a inter-server lfg chat channel for each dungeon. Maybe an inter-server dungeon finder.

A cross server dungeon finder will probably take more resources than its worth--considering GW2 doesn't really have server clusters, just every server to linked to every other fricking server. Every time I stop a moment to think about the cross server TP I am amazed at them actually able to put it up. Imagine all the transactions that thing processes every second of every day.

Simply don't call it "Dungeon Finder" and avoid any link to WoW or the rabid GW2 fans, will simply reject anything that is even remotely close associated with WoW, no matter if a system is actually good or bad.

Sad, but true.

Having a system that facilitates forming groups should not be considered a bad thing just because another game did it.

No. Not only for the terrible social aspect it brings but also from a dungeon design perspective. The dungeons (and especially explorable) aren't really meant to be pugged by 5 random strangers. It happens still, but eventually you get enough people who can't get it done without co-ordination, then they start crying for nerfs to the content, which in turn leads to nerfed content. Dungeons should be designed with co-ordinated guild runs in mind, not 5 randoms who queued up in a dungeon finder. If you really don't want to work with others, maybe an MMO named GUILD Wars isn't the game for you.

I would like to see some form of grouping for those of us who are in small guilds and may otherwise never get to see any of the instances. My ele is lvl 53 and I have not been able to get into one yet.

Joining multiple guilds may or may not help. Guilds are loyal to their full time participants, which is how it should be.

Its a distant past now, but there was a time, in a long ago era called 2005-8, when WoW was a very friendly sociable game...

Now its buried beneath the radioactive fallout and ruins of the dungeon finder, over which mohawk sporting gnomes and werewolves in leather ride by on scavanged mounts looking to lay waste to the last pockets of civilized dialog, in a land where there is no Mel Gibson to ride in on his black car and save the day from Tina Turner...

- Its a horrid wasteland...

And you can trace it to the dungeon finder bringing cross-server grouping and the lack of accountability.

We need better grouping tools - but they need to think very carefully about how they do it. I would look to City of Heroes for guidance.
- All it had was simply an ability to search for everyone who's in the local server and has set a flag to 'looking for group' - and you could put a line of text next to your status to say what you wanted to do.

We kind of have that tool already, just the searching on it doesn't work.

GW1 also had a good tool. But maybe we don't want the line of text - since GW1 shows us that gets taken by tradespam...

But a random cross server dungeon finder is exactly what ruined WoW's community.

We need better grouping tools - but they need to think very carefully about how they do it. I would look to City of Heroes for guidance.
- All it had was simply an ability to search for everyone who's in the local server and has set a flag to 'looking for group' - and you could put a line of text next to your status to say what you wanted to do.

SW:TOR had a tool like this originally. It sucked.

If anything is implemented, please do more than the tool described above.

i think something needs to be put in, it would annoy me zoning to different areas of dungeons besides the huge cost of using waypoints, since most people seem to group up in the zone the dungeon is in. but then you could easily miss another dungeon you wanna do just cause you were in zone x instead of zone y. you could just go in circles all day. some kinda tool should be here to help. guilds arent always available.

plus, once guesting goes live we will need help finding people from other servers to play with.

Its a distant past now, but there was a time, in a long ago era called 2005-8, when WoW was a very friendly sociable game...

Now its buried beneath the radioactive fallout and ruins of the dungeon finder, over which mohawk sporting gnomes and werewolves in leather ride by on scavanged mounts looking to lay waste to the last pockets of civilized dialog, in a land where there is no Mel Gibson to ride in on his black car and save the day from Tina Turner...

- Its a horrid wasteland...

And you can trace it to the dungeon finder bringing cross-server grouping and the lack of accountability.

We need better grouping tools - but they need to think very carefully about how they do it. I would look to City of Heroes for guidance.
- All it had was simply an ability to search for everyone who's in the local server and has set a flag to 'looking for group' - and you could put a line of text next to your status to say what you wanted to do.

We kind of have that tool already, just the searching on it doesn't work.

GW1 also had a good tool. But maybe we don't want the line of text - since GW1 shows us that gets taken by tradespam...

But a random cross server dungeon finder is exactly what ruined WoW's community.

People saying this are *ing retarded. I played WoW since Closed Beta Phase two to current, and the community had ALWAYS BEEN THE SAME. There was NEVER a magical change in LK that all the sudden turned the blizzard community to dip shits. . . . they were dip shits before WoW was ever even in development.

Come up with your OWN blizzard hating quotes, because when you say that DFinder ruined the community, you show just how *ing stupid and ignorant you are.

Clearly WoW is the easy mode family based MMO that might have this feature. Is there any other mmo that has it? I've played many to end game and I can't think of a single one other than just listing that your looking for a group.

No this is not needed. We don't need to dumb the game down to easy mode.

So far I don't see the need for a dungeon finder as it is easy to find groups whether you're in a guild or not. The purpose of a dungeon finder is to allow you to find a group because it is all but impossible to do so otherwise like in WoW. Unlike many here I don't think it ruins communities because most players don't keep in contact with the people they form a dungeon PUG group with the 'traditional' way anyhow. I've done maybe ten dungeon runs and out of all those people I've played with only one of them got added to my friends list and I haven't really talked to him since. People will still argue that in games like WoW the dungeon finder allowed people to steal loot and to otherwise troll other players with out fear of repercussions because no one in the group would ever see each other again. In this game everyone gets loot, etc. so that point is null. I just don't think a dungeon finder is needed at this time (maybe in the future however).

Lightingbird, on 17 September 2012 - 04:57 PM, said:

Clearly WoW is the easy mode family based MMO that might have this feature. Is there any other mmo that has it? I've played many to end game and I can't think of a single one other than just listing that your looking for a group.

No this is not needed. We don't need to dumb the game down to easy mode.

The dungeon finder had nothing to do with WoW dungeons being easy mode. It was just a 'quality of life' improvement for a game where only a small percentage of players spread across dozens of servers were interested in doing older dungeon content.

Dungeon finder was needed in WoW. Right now it isn't needed in Guild Wars 2 but if it is ever implemented it won't dumb down anything.

People saying this are *ing retarded. I played WoW since Closed Beta Phase two to current, and the community had ALWAYS BEEN THE SAME. There was NEVER a magical change in LK that all the sudden turned the blizzard community to dip shits. . . . they were dip shits before WoW was ever even in development.

This. The only significant change in server communities I ever noticed in WoW was when BG's were added and World-PvP died out.

Clearly WoW is the easy mode family based MMO that might have this feature. Is there any other mmo that has it? I've played many to end game and I can't think of a single one other than just listing that your looking for a group.

No this is not needed. We don't need to dumb the game down to easy mode.

Make it easy on u Find a MMO that has a worse or more simplistic grouping/lfg/lfd system

Atm GW2 has "nearly" the same "grouping system" EverQuest 1 had back in 1999, the effects i see in chat are also identically! Now u tell me if this is bad or good or u simply don't care

If anything is implemented, please do more than the tool described above.

Frankly I want a tool that REQUIRES whispering the other person and communicating.

This is a social game.

If you automate the social aspects too much, you destroy community.

The tool may have sucked in Star Wars, I don't care. In City of Heroes it bred a vibrant community where you could go from character creation to being in a group of folks you'd stay together with for the first 20-odd levels... in mere moments.

They had just enough to be able to see and find folks who were looking, and the tools to whisper them and invite them.
- And people got used to it, and did so.

While certain zones over time became -THE SPOTS- to hang out and say "looking for a group for Atlas City sewers run" or "looking to do the Paragon thingy" or whatever.
- Yes, this was a bit spammy, but frankly...

City of Heroes had the easiest grouping of any MMO I've ever played - other than WoW's dungeon finder. But because people had had to whisper each other to form the group... once formed, folks would chat. And quite often we would stay group for a full 100% completion on 2 or 3 zones -after- the original mission / dungeon / taskforce / etc...

- Over time it sort of became: "Doing Talos Island, space for 3 more, whisper EMO-Man."
- And people did...

Groups would form very fast.

Cultures like this take time to evolve, and GW2 has all the right ingredients for it. If we let it have the evolution.

I think it's hard for people to find groups is because of simply the dungeons aren't that great in general for people. I mean I haven't tried any at all yet but I'm simply put off due to the rewards would require replaying the dungeons over 50+ times to get a set out of it. Not to mention I hear dungeons are harder in explorable mode and can take hours.

I don't really want to spend a few hours failing a dungeon when I could spend it advancing my own personal storyline.

But maybe that's just me or others share the same feeling. Although I do often see people spamming over and over for "LFG [dungeon] or so. I would have thought with so many sales that people wouldn't find it that hard to find a group regardless of how many servers there are and time of day. Sometimes it feels a bit empty :|

Having a system that facilitates forming groups should not be considered a bad thing just because another game did it.

Not true at all

If its a good idea its a good idea no matter of who implements it first. And personally I like it. Actually I am surprised why anyone would ever be against it. If you dont want random groups you dont have to use it! I honestly dont see any harm with having such a tool!

But maybe that's just me or others share the same feeling. Although I do often see people spamming over and over for "LFG [dungeon] or so. I would have thought with so many sales that people wouldn't find it that hard to find a group regardless of how many servers there are and time of day. Sometimes it feels a bit empty :|

It isn't about sales. It isn't about Population. It is about dungeon design. Want to run an explorable? Get ready to run CoF as that is the MOST run explorable dungeon due to its design. You will almost always see people wanting to run that dungeon.

Want to run say CoE explorable or AC? Get a guild. Story mode seems to have the same problem as I have done all but Arah (Saving for last so not counting this yet) and CoE. Couldn't find a group for CoE in LA or in front of the dungeon.

Also the rose colored glasses in these forums are so great. I remember when I was like that with EQ when WoW released.

Then I realized what a pain in the ass it really was back then when I played on a emulated classic server and promptly shut my mouth.

But please, purge the dungeon-finder from WoW out of all your minds. This is not what I meant when I said dungeon finder. That was just a name for the system I thought should be implemented into Guild Wars 2.

I personally think that as soon as guesting into other servers goes live, we should be able to get a dungeon finding utility. That way people from all kinds of servers can pull together and complete dungeons. I'm thinking that because the Trading Post already has cross-server capabilities, it wouldn't be hard for a dungeon finder to have the same capability. I think the other dungeon finders in other MMOs obviously relied too heavily on the trinity system, and therefore the monk/healer had to know exactly what they were doing. Guild Wars 2 is built very differently, and so far I've discovered that people generally help one another out. If you're downed - people help. When you target something - people attack it.

I truly think it could work if it's done correctly. Pick up groups do work if the players already know what they're doing. So, perhaps some kind of system whereby you select the dungeon you're doing, and your experience with the dungeon? For example, I could queue up for the Citadel of Flame dungeon and then select a tick box from 3, which says:

- 1st timer
- Experienced
- Pro

It's not a perfect system, and some people will obviously abuse it, but it's just an idea to improve the system

I'm not sure if a dungeon finder like tool is the way to go but I think we need some system in place to help those that form PUGs. Currently the best way its done is spamming in the zone that holds the dungeon or someone going to Lion's Arch spamming for a group for x dungeon.

I dislike doing zones that have Dungeons or Dragons mainly because of the spam: "LFG for x" or "When's the Dragon Up" because they can flood the map chat. Any system that can help random people join up (without making the difficulty of the Dungeon suffer) and lower the amount of spam in a zone has my vote.

But please, purge the dungeon-finder from WoW out of all your minds. This is not what I meant when I said dungeon finder. That was just a name for the system I thought should be implemented into Guild Wars 2.

Also people seem to ignore how different GW2 guild and server system works. They forgot guesting (When it is implemented) is essentially cross server dungeon finder, but slightly less accurate as you would have to server hop with hopes to get the correct group. Also anyone can join guilds across multiple servers etc. You are NOT cut off from people like you on are WoW.

For instance:
You get paired with someone from server "X" and you are on "Y" in WoW. You complete the dungeon and it was the best PuG you have ever been on. Everyone was having fun. You can't find them again.

You get paired with someone from server "X" and you are on "Y" in GW2. You complete the dungeon and it was the best PuG you have ever been on. Everyone was having fun. You simply invite them to your guild or add them to your friends list. When you want to play together you simple swap to their server and party for a dungeon. FREE of charge.

That in itself is a HUGE difference in mechanics of how servers and guilds are handled. It can NOT be compared with WoW because they deter you from swapping servers easily. So even if you wanted to play with the guy from another server you are penalized for it.

Even if we had a server wide system, similar to what we had in gw1, like has been mentioned above. Where you just put a advert up "LFG CoF exp" for eg and ppl can form parties from wherever... it'll allow people to play the game rather than standing around in an area or next to a dungeon.

Imo make the dungeon finder, server only. That way you're playing with people from your home server (or guesting at) and the accountability stays that WoW screwed up on with the x-server idea. We simply dont need to go x-server due to the sheer amount of populations already. Sticking it within server will actually raise community awareness and togetherness imo. You wanna be a douche to 4 others repeatedly on YOUR server. Good luck running outside your guild then.